What is Organising from Elsewhere?
It started with a vision in the Peruvian jungle, grew into a radical analysis of why, in the Global North, our ways of organising for change fail, and is now a collaborative effort to discover new ways that embody a deep sense of interconnectedndess.
What we are trying to do and why we think it will work
What are we trying to do?
Our current ways of organising are underpinned by the same embodied notion of separation as our extractive socio-economic system. This means they recreate the cultures and power dynamics of the very system we are trying to change and reinforce a fundamental idea – that of separation – that we are trying to challenge. This undermines our attempts to bring about fundamental systemic change.
We are therefore trying to encourage social movements to think about how the way they organise shapes and limits what they are able to achieve. We think having this conversation is both urgent and necessary.
Moreover, we are trying support groups to create bespoke forms of organising which are underpinned by a fundamentally different assumption to that of this extractive system, that of interconnectedness.
How are we trying to do this?
We are trying to ignite the conversation on how our organisational methods shape and limit what we can achieve by initiating a monthly online forum in collaboration with Samatha Slade (more information on this is coming soon). We are also launching a ‘fractal’ podcast series which will work like a game of tag: in each episode, an interviewee is invited to engage with the ideas in our white paper. Then they get to choose who they want to interview and learn from, so the interviewee from one episode will become the interviewer of the next.
We are also working to support social movements to organise from fundamentally different assumptions to that of our extractive system. We aim to achieve this by supporting groups to devise their own organisational facilitation tools and practices which:
are underpinned by a narrative and a language that makes sense to those using them
have the effect of engendering an embodied sense of interconnectedness by altering participants’ state of awareness
result in participants having a somatic experience of ideas and actions ‘arriving’ from beyond their narrow sense of self.
We believe such practices will foster a genuine, heartfelt belief in those who use them that their decisions or actions do not originate within any individual member but emerge because the group is able to harness collective intelligence.
We believe this will help participants make decisions and undertake actions together from an embodied sense of interconnectedness.
(By way of analogy, imagine a form of Liberating Structures that supports you in coming up with your own unique LS for your specific situation rather than being a library of templates, and that the effects of these structures are psychedelic.)
We want to support groups in this process by enabling them to learn from ‘wisdom holders’ – those with paradigmatically different notions of separation – through embodied forms of learning. These embodied forms of learning would de-centre the analytical mind and our unconscious ability to recognise patterns. This would reduce the risk of simply appropriating or copying practices developed by others from other contexts.
Why do we want to do this?
This project is guided by our understanding of complex systems, how they work and how they are successfully encouraged to change.
In scientific language, a complex system can be encouraged to shift to a new ‘attractor’ state if constraints on the system are changed. To help explain what this means, let’s use the metaphor of the AMOC (sometimes called the ‘Gulf Stream’). The AMOC is a complex system and an untold myriad of interactions lead it to follow a particular, stable path through the Atlantic Ocean. Yet the route it takes through the ocean can be radically altered if we change a particular constraint, namely if colder, less saline water from melting glaciers enters its system – a process we are currently witnessing due to global heating. Scientists are now predicting that this change can lead to the collapse of the AMOC’s current circulation pattern within the next few decades. This in turn will effect the complex systems the AMOC is part of, the weather and climate systems. In other words, identifying and altering constraints within complex systems is key to how they shift significantly.
Our extractive system is also a complex system and is underpinned by the assumption that everyone of us is separate from each other and the world in general. Its foundational ideas, like that of the ‘individual,’ of ‘competition,’ and of ‘separation from and dominion over nature,’ depend on this assumption.
Therefore, we think, the more interactions underpinned by an embodied sense of interconnectedness arise within this extractive system, the more we may radically affect this complex system by operating outside its core assumption of ‘separation’.
Moreover, because we are a social species who have to work with and depend on each other, everything is ‘organised’. So finding ways to move and decide together from an embodied sense of interconnectedness has the potential to spread quickly throughout the system.
In other words, organising together from an embodied sense of interconnectedness could have as powerful an effect on the complex systems we are part of as injecting colder, less saline water has on the AMOC.
To make this abstract idea more concrete, imagine for a moment that it was possible for everyone involved in solving a problem to genuinely experience ideas and knowings as arising from a collective intelligence situated beyond the narrow confines of the self. Noone would therefore feel that they ‘owned’ an idea. This could positively affect power relations in ways that current forms of organising cannot achieve, as they are based on an intrinsic assumption of individual entities negotiating.
Is it possible to achieve?
Yes, we think it is. Human beings go into a trance state very easily; all any of us need to do is watch a movie and bam! – our ‘felt sense’ of ‘I’ is significantly altered, an embodied sense of interconnectedness with those in the story is quickly engendered. Moreover, some traditions have hundreds or thousands of years of experience in practices that give rise to a felt sense of interconnectedness. For most of human history, we experienced a less dualistic sense of ‘I,’ a sense that we were both separate from and simultaneously a part of the living organism of the land that fed us, the community we were part of, and the ancestors we arose from. If we did it before – and according to anthropological evidence reappraising hunter-gatherer life, we were healthier, worked less, and lived within rather than undermined environmental boundaries – we can find ways to do it again that work in the context we now find ourselves. To get there, we need narratives and practices that engender a non-dualistic, somatic sense of interconnectedness that arises from our specific contexts. This project is about supporting people in this process so that we work together against terrible injustices from core assumptions that have the power to genuinely change this toxic system.
The weird and wonderful origins of the project
It’s 2022, and both the doctors and I (Gully speaking, btw.) are rather baffled. A Shipibo shaman has made a tumour that was growing inside me disappear. He did this from thousands of miles away by instructing me to pour two litres of beer over my head for a week—something he called a ‘beer bath’—and to meditate with candles at the same time every day. The doctors, having just put me under general anaesthetic and going inside me, were unable to find the tumour. They scratched their heads. Where had it gone? They could not explain what had happened. Neither could I, and being a curious soul, I travelled to the Peruvian Amazon to work with the shaman in person.
And there I was, in the middle of this heaving jungle, where bright colours excited rather than tired the eyes, where the cacophony of insects, birds, and creatures that slithered, crawled, and climbed felt like the breathing in and out of the earth itself. The shaman had me bathe myself in the leaves of plants, meditate underneath the shade of ‘teacher’ trees, drink strange teas, fast, and endure periods of isolation and silence. I worked with wild tobacco and took part in ceremonies where the psychedelic effects of plants and the songs of the shaman were deeply and profoundly healing. Toward the end of my stay, I had a vision. I felt—in a way that was so much more than feeling and that I can’t describe in words—the importance of urgently focusing on the ‘how’ we organise rather than the ‘what’ we organise. I felt how the ways we move and decide together arise from the same sense of separation that underpins this system and, because of this, can only reproduce it. Without radically different organisational methods, the change so desperately needed will fail to be brought about. Our need to protect ourselves and others from the brutality that engulfs the world blinds us to the fact that, in Audre Lorde’s words, “the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.”
This ‘vision’ was ridiculous in its scope. It was also a ridiculous vision for me to have, given that I had very limited experience as an activist, had left school when I was 13, and was anything but an academically trained anthropologist. Yet, I have never in my life felt so certain as I did then. I felt like I was lost in a comically cartoonish version of the bullshit Hollywood story I most detest, namely: a hero chosen to save the world, given a mission by God. Who knows the true nature of reality; the one thing I am certain of is that reality does not work like a Hollywood movie. Visions are not literal messages from supernatural beings, and neither I nor any other individual is going to ‘save’ the planet. This, in fact, is the kind of narrative that keeps capitalism going and the very idea of separation that my vision was critiquing.
Yet there I was – hook, line, and sinker believing I had been given my purpose for living, even if I had little idea what it meant or how to do it. For about six months after leaving the jungle, my sense of ‘I’ was very different. It’s hard to describe, but when I allowed myself to go quiet, I would dissolve a little. I would have a strong sense that I was receiving messages, signs, and signals from outside of me and would experience powerful intuitions I trusted completely. To use an analogy: a tiny cell in my stomach sends tiny, unique, yet important signals to my body, and my body sends signals to this tiny cell on how it can stay healthy and play its small part in the health of my body. Similarly, I felt profoundly that I was a tiny cell in the body of the earth that I am part of, and that this body (the earth) was sending me signals on how to stay healthy and play my small part in its health.
And it was from this altered state of ‘I’ that I kept having the recurring intuition that I needed to share this idea with Wolfgang. I hardly knew the guy. A fascinating conversation in a pub, a shared experience trying to support his team to get various national XR UK circles to agree on a strategy, and two walks in the park during COVID. Yet somehow, I was convinced the right thing to do was to come to his boat, share the vision I had in the jungle, and get him to smoke wild tobacco together. It was the right place and the right time, as Wolfgang, burnt by his experiences of XR, also believed a radical new approach to organisational methods was needed. So we agreed to do a podcast series exploring how others were organising in radically different ways so we could learn from them. Fast forward a few months, a team has come together to attempt this podcast, and we were wrestling with a massive problem: how could we prevent this podcast from simply being neocolonialist, extractivist, orientalist, and racist? How could we avoid extracting knowledge and appropriating it? How could we avoid assimilating everything we heard into our individualistic worldview?
And the answer came in the weirdest fashion. I stumbled across a fascinating article by Steve Seager and, driven by intuition, I reached out to him. This led to some very thought-provoking conversations and a team meeting in Pelican House to discuss the podcast. The meeting did not go as planned, the problems seemed insurmountable, and we watched in despair as the podcast idea died. Then, Wolfgang, to my mind looking slightly glassy-eyed and excited, articulated a genius idea: Rather than try to learn with our conscious minds from those who still remember how to organise from a sense of interconnection, why don’t we listen and learn from them through the body, our ‘full system’, as our bodies are simply brilliant at recognising patterns?
Wolfgang reached out to Dave Snowden, a complexity ‘gugu’. We explained the insight I received in the jungle and Wolfgang’s ‘full system intelligence’ learning. Soon, we were working with his incredible team, particularly Ellie and Anna, on how a technology they had developed called Sensemaker Maps could intersect with embodied forms of learning. Driven by another intuition, I reached out to Tulia, a colleague of the shaman I had worked with. She began the long and complex process of supporting the team to build relationships with ‘wisdom holders’ based on Right Relations and to deepen our understanding of our own prejudices and privileges.
Then Joel came across our white paper, got in touch, and from there the podcast aspect of the project was reborn. We were curious to have others critique our ideas, start a conversation about how ways of organising shape and limit what can be achieved, and learn from what others are doing. This time, however, our aim was to let go of control and allow insights to emerge. The questions stay the same, but like a game of tag, the interviewees of each episode would choose who they want to interview next. Who knows where this series will go and what insights will unfold? We don’t.
Samantha Slade, the author of Going Horizontal, read our white paper. Led by her incredibly subtle creative process, an idea for a monthly forum emerged—a space for all those curious about how we can move and decide differently, how we can learn differently, and how we can harness the power of complex systems. A place for those frustrated by the limitations imposed by the current ways of organising on the social movements they are part of. A time within which radically new ideas might cross-pollinate in unpredictable and exciting ways.
A series of serendipities led Sophia to join the team. Sat together on Wolfgang’s boat, Sophia listened to both of us pontificate and explain the ‘project.’ When we were done, she quietly told us: “The role I would like to take is one where I support us as a team to apply the principles outlined in our white paper to the way we all work together.” Since then, our team meetings have been far more fun – and more effective at the same time. I can report that we are very much enjoying our own exploration of tools and practices that have the psychedelic effect of engendering an embodied sense of interconnectedness, as well as narratives that make sense to us.
The people behind the project
We are two co-founders (Gully and Wolfgang), a core team of researchers, facilitators, creatives and advisors (Tulia, Sophia, Joel, Samantha, Ellie, Anna and Dave) as well as a wider network of people and organisations working on various forms of societal change.
We are based in the UK, the Netherlands, the US and Mexico.